Virtua Stick, Japanese oddities and Euro-greatness

I've been wanting to post about a lot of stuff lately, but for some reason I just didn't feel like writing, and when that happens I just can't force it. So, instead of doing whole post about each subject, I'll just cram it all in one, hopefully not too long, post. To start things off, the Virtua Stick. After countless hours of gazing at pictures of it, with the wallet too light to afford one, I finally found a deal too good to ignore. Having finally bought the hallowed controller, I immediately plug it in for a session of DodonPachi and it didn't disappoint me.

(this is not mine, just a random picture I found on the web)

Actually I was a little disappointed by the fact that the joystick is noisy as hell, but in terms of performance, the stick is tight and responsive, allowing for some bullet-dodging impossible to recreate with the regular pad. But the best was yet to come, for this stick obviously can be used as a 2nd controller, allowing for the first ever 2 player matches I've played with my Saturn! Yes, my friends, for the first time in my life I shared my Saturn with a buddy!

Going by the nickname of fredy, he had promised here to pass by my place to play a bit of Savaki, and indeed he did that yesterday. But oh, we didn't just play Savaki. We also played DoDonPachi, Battle Garegga, X-Men, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Figher 2, and it was awesome!


But moving on to the single-player side of the Saturn, before even thinking about the Virtua Stick I spent my time playing two very different, but equally great, games. The first was an hidden gem coming straight from Japan, going by the name of Tryrush Deppy, and it's times like this that I can't help but wonder about the brilliant future the Saturn could've had here in Europe and also in America, had we received all the great games that were exclusive to Japan. This, my friends, is a platformer capable of rivalling games like Rayman or Astal, when it comes to both awesome graphics and great gameplay.



But hey, we still had a lot of good games released here, and some even made here, like Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2 by Core Design (yup, the same guys from tomb Raider). Sequel to the great Sega CD game Thunderstrike, here you control a helicopter but don't think of it as a flight simulator, because this is a pure action game.

(the European cover is great, isn't it)

You choose the mission (from South America to Eastern Europe or Japanese waters), equip your heli with a vast array of different missiles and bombs, and then you're free to blast everything in your way. There are some different types of missions, like escort or protection, but the better ones are the "just blow everything up". The graphics are awesome for a early game, the gameplay is solid and intuitive after getting used to the controls, and overall the game is just plain fun.



That's all for now, folks :)